The SSRC’s Eurasia Program invites you to visit their new digital forum, Engaging Eurasia, a resource for the Eurasian scholarship community and a platform for the work of active and alumni Eurasia Program Title VIII Fellows. Content includes detailed information on recent Fellows and their projects as well as alumni profiles highlighting the Council’s role in building an intellectual infrastructure for informed and active engagement with the Eurasian region. A policy brief series and a working paper series are regularly updated with fresh contributions from the field. An Alumni Insights commentary series offering expert takes on current issues relevant to the region opens with a short piece from Becca McBride (2011) on the Russian adoption ban. Additional resources include Uzbek and Kazakh language modules and video recordings of the webinar series Quantitative Research Methods in Eurasian Studies.

Another SSRC Forum also launched this month! Reverberations, produced by the Religion Program as part of its New Directions in the Study of Prayer grants initiative, is a digital hub for communication among grantees, a platform for a broader set of academic and public engagements, and a space for the curation of a wide range of resources and materials related to the practice of prayer.

The Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project is proving an invaluable resource for those reporting on and responding to recent developments in North Korea. The 2012 edition of the project’s annual North Korea Chronology series tracks events, negotiations, and media coverage surrounding North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Director Leon Sigal discussed potential scenarios for the region with Global Asia, the Star-Ledger, and Wisconsin Public Radio.

Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum director Bill O'Neill penned an op-ed for the Miami Herald on legal history being made in Haiti: "Duvalier Must Face Justice."

Measure of America remains at the heart of the conversation about well-being in the United States. Codirector Kristen Lewis appeared on “Am I Poor?,” a HuffPost Livepanel about defining and measuring poverty, and also wrote an op-ed for the Stanford Social Innovation Review with codirector Sarah Burd-Sharps.

The Drugs, Security and Democracy program has an expanding network of scholars publicizing policy-relevant research. Fellow Annette Idler (2012) contributed an essay on security threats in Venezuela to the cross-institutional Cambridge and Oxford blog Politics in Spires. Federico Pérez (2012) argues for care and caution in the repopulation of urban conflict zones in an article for Open Democracy. And Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera (2011) talked to Action 4 News in Texas about Mexican drug cartels training women as assassins. In the latest On the Line podcast, Froylán Enciso (2012) discusses his work on drug dealing in Sinaloa and the rise of narcoculture in Mexico [in Spanish].

In other Fellows news, Emily Taguchi's Abe Fellowship for Journalists (2011) project on post-Fukushima recovery in Minamisoma, Japan, "Japanese Town Hit Hard by Natural and Nuclear Disaster Imagines Renewable Future," was featured as a video piece on PBS NewsHour. Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow Sean M. Decatur (1990) has been named the nineteenth president of Kenyon College.